The full truth -Roee L.

http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/the-most-important-video-about-israel-ever-made

The following article was written in a response to the video link mentioned above. These are my pure opinions and reactions to the video, yet I encourage everyone to facilitate their own beliefs about Israel and the video.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was taught my whole life that mistakes are beneficial, and should be seen as an opportunity to learn. There's no way we learn from mistakes if we refuse to acknowledge them. There is a common misconception among advocates for Israel that they are required to support and love Israel's every action. I believe that not only is this wrong, but that it does more harm than help to the state of Israel. Rather, the world should love and criticize Israel lovingly, in hopes of making it a better state.

Granted, the video,created by Dennis Prager of Prager University, is beautifully put together. It strategically evades Israel's questionable actions in the past, and instead navigates through the sea of pro-Israel arguments. As propaganda, the video is perfect. In fact, if I were to show it to the 70%* of people in the world that simply have no opinion about Israel, it would be an incredibly easy way to make them think they knew everything there is to know about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After 5 minutes, they would have a one-sided, but very pro-Israel viewpoint.

The video drastically fails, however, to discuss the issues in Israel which until this day remain controversial. Not once did the video mention the controversial Israeli settlements which exist and grow within the borders of the West Bank. The video also failed to mention the reality that there were massive Arab populations living in British Palestine before it became the Jewish state, and that those Arabs became refugees who saw the establishment of Israel as a forceful invasion of Jews into their land.

Again, I am an advocate of Israel who supports Israel and will continue to do so until my heart stops beating. Still, there is something absurd not only about the video, but about the blind devotion of the modern pro-Israel advocating community. How can we hope to improve a country if we never recognize it's flaws? How can Israel even begin to repair its issues if they are not being brought up in pro-Israel conversations around the world?

-Roee Landesman

*One of my favorite concepts about pro-Israel advocacy is the idea that the world's population is split into three groups: 15% of the global population who will forever hate Israel, regardless of how convincing the statistics or arguments are, 2) The group that I identify with, the 15% who support Israel, and can never be convinced otherwise. 3) 70% of people who are innocently ignorant about Israel, and have no strong opinion about the country or it's politics. (As taught by Jonathan Carey, Israel advocate and teacher, during a Write on for Israel meeting)